One Person Directed Nearly Every Episode In Seinfeld's First 5 Seasons

Plenty of TV directors have had hot streaks, but few have been as prolific as the one Tom Cherones experienced on "Seinfeld." The filmmaker got in on the ground level of the uproarious NBC sitcom, and stuck with the show through the end of its fifth season. By that point, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld's "show about nothing" was on its way to the top of the TV heap, climbing the Nielson ratings and taking over the cultural zeitgeist with phrases like "master of my domain" and "not that there's anything wrong with that!"

Cherones was there for it all, and he didn't just tag in behind the camera every few episodes like many filmmakers do today. Instead, the director helmed a whopping 80 episodes of the first five seasons — out of just 86. The show's pilot, the Philip Baker Hall guest-starrer "The Library," and Jason Alexander's directorial debut are among the only six episodes in the first half of the show not directed by Cherones. The filmmaker, who also served as a producer for the show's first five seasons, even earned a DGA award for the season 4 favorite "The Contest," and shares the show's lone Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy win.

If Cherones directed so many hits, why did he leave "Seinfeld" in its prime? As he once told the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, "Jerry asked me to. He was tired of the same thing, I guess." Both Seinfeld and David were known at the time for pushing the comedically complex sitcom to new places, and according to Cherones and others, that mandate led to staff turnover — and not just once the show became a mega-hit. "We changed writers almost every season," Cherones explained to an interviewer in 2011, "and finally, he just wanted somebody else [as director], another presence to try to keep it fresh." Andy Ackerman, known for his work on "Cheers," took over as lead director of the later seasons.

"[Jerry] always said from the beginning, 'When this thing isn't working anymore, we gotta stop,'" Cherones noted, "and eventually he did." The director admitted to the Academy that he didn't watch much "Seinfeld" after being asked to leave the show, but emphasizes that it wasn't only his former show that he missed — he just wasn't big on watching TV at all. After all, Cherones stayed busy for the decade that followed, directing dozens of episodes of "NewsRadio" and popping up for guest directing spots on shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch."

Cherones also answered the call when Seinfeld asked him and many other former cast and crew members to return for the series' final episode. The prolific director played an extra during a scene set in a coffee shop, and recalled an exchange with his scene partner — former NBC exec Warren Littlefield — that drove home his sense that Seinfeld cared first and foremost about the quality of the show. "[Littlefield] said, 'I just offered Jerry two million dollars a week to do another season, and he said no,'" Cherones recalled. That number would later rise even higher, but it didn't make a difference; "Seinfeld" ended after nine seasons, with a series finale that still gets fans fuming to this day. Cherones, for his part, did make time in his busy schedule to watch the two-part episode in which he appeared. His verdict? "I didn't like it very well. I just thought it was a little too depressing."